1890.] PUBLIC DOCUMENT — No. 4. 185 



lower class. She has therefore lacked, not only the breeding- 

 ground for great men, but those grand educational influences 

 that have blessed the farms of the United States. That the 

 country should have been feeble, that frequent revolutions 

 should have taken place,,, property Ije insecure and adminis- 

 trations unstable, has been the natural and legitimate result 

 of an attempt to found a republic on an ignorant peasantry. 

 Just now there is a clamor to change New England farmino;, 

 and introduce peasant farmers. A peasant class tilling our 

 farms would be one of the greatest calamities that could 

 befall our State or nation ; our future hope lies in maintain- 

 ing on the land an intelligent class of farmers. 



Agricultural Dej^ression. 



There is great agricultural depression at present in New 

 England ; the vocation of farming is here under a dark 

 cloud. The fiirmer must toil harder and for lower profits ; 

 moreov^er, despite his labors he often sees his land decrease in 

 value ; hundreds of farms in New England are to-day worth 

 scarcely half what they were some years ago. The w^ise 

 politicians and the still wiser newspapers are discussing this 

 matter as if it was an isolated fact, belonging only to New 

 England, and are oflering wise reasons as to the cause, and 

 suggesting nostrums for the remedy. One tells us the cause 

 is the tarifi" ; another, that it is the Western competition ; 

 another, unjust discrimination in railroad freights ; another, 

 the manufacturing of oleomargarine and similar productions. 

 Another class traces it to moral and social causes ; that the 

 Puritans were a narrow set of men, too narrow to succeed, 

 and were a failure, and now must make way for the more 

 liberal Irishman or French Canadian. Some city writers 

 trace the New England farmer's decline to his miserable 

 domestic habits ; he eats pies and that destroys his digestion, 

 and the decline of his farming follows as a matter of course ; 

 and so on through a vast cloud of causes, some of which are 

 undoubtedly factors in the pro1)lem, others mere whims or 

 fanc}^ 



The agricultural depression of New England is not a mere 

 local fact ; it is part of a great depression of the industry, 

 which extends all over Christendom, except in new regions, 



